


Familiar Passion, Drained Away

by Birdpeople (DeusExMachina)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Just a little prose about how much you can learn about someone by arguing with them, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 19:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2240124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeusExMachina/pseuds/Birdpeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They often sat together, refining their arguments, pushing ideas back and forth, tongues heavy with babble, slow in their passion. Words were slow, but thoughts, ideas, well, ideas were currency. Immediate and conveyed through a wave of a hand, the downward curl of lips. Words could not keep pace with the worlds inside their heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiar Passion, Drained Away

For hope did not grow in his empty chest, and where rays of light might coax it from him, he was careful to stamp it out.   
  


But he found that while he had not been paying attention, he had let hope take root, and now it was too late. And the beginning of his downfall spread its green, green leaves toward the light.  
  


They often sat together, refining their arguments, pushing ideas back and forth, tongues heavy with babble, slow in their passion. Words were slow, but thoughts, ideas, well, ideas were currency. Immediate and conveyed through a wave of a hand, the downward curl of lips. Words could not keep pace with the worlds inside their heads.   
  


And so they clashed, each sharpening his teeth against the other, and though every instinct in him begged him to show his throat and yield and let the other grind his teeth sharp on him, to refuse to tell him to stop just because it hurt, he kept his head up, defiant and full of ideas.  
  


He wields language better than the other does, for all his passion, because once he was passionate, and he has words left over from that era of his life, depths of argument that would have occurred to the other in time, but which are already familiar to him. And he offers these up to the other, hurls them at him. And the other takes them and chews them and hurls them back. And on it goes.   
  


And they are sharp by the end, and riveted, and bare. Each has seen more of the other in those moments than each was previously thought to possess. And each one saw himself in the other. And each one saw potential. And was unable to look away or to deny it.   
  


And so an uncomfortable sameness was admitted in the privacy of their minds. Or the former privacy. Baring their thoughts had been to bare their hearts, and now the other would suffer as he had suffered, heart cooling in the open air.   
  


Yet it was good. And right. And exciting. And as comforting as it was terrifying.

**Author's Note:**

> I had originally posted this on my tumblr, since I post shorter stuff there, but I'm moving it here instead. Because yeah. My tumblr is quasi-birdpeople.tumblr.com. Come and say hi!!


End file.
